Personal Trainer: Friend or Foe?

The very first experience with an exceptional trainer is really one of the most treasured memories in your journey to your fitness goals.

Unfortunately some times it’s the first experience that turns you off and leaves you feeling dejected and hopeless about your health.

So how do you chose a trainer who is going to be the one that helps you reshape your life and turn you into the strong, fit and confident person that you want to become. Rather than an egomaniac with dollar signs in their eyes and human conveyor belt style of training who will set you even further back.

Firstly to make choosing a personal trainer easier it is important to understand that there are Technical Trainers and Personal Trainers Sunshine Coast.

Technical trainers are searching for lots of new clients all the time, always eager to get you in with all the promise of results with little delivery and like to work as lone wolves, seeing everyone as competition. While it is undoubtable they do have the technical skill to make you sweat, they can seem to have the personality or interpersonal skills of a cold fish. Technical trainers are focused on ego, being cutting edge and giving you the next best thing, shiny sales men who can sell ice to Eskimos and brutally flog your muscles but ignore fundamentals of exercise and the basic human need of connection and hide their own insecurities buried within. On a physical level they will make you train hard but don’t look for depth inside of them for they fear you will find them lacking.

Warning signs of a bad trainer include:

  • Can’t or won’t provide proof of professional credentials or personal references.
  • Sell or Force you into a contract during the first session before you get the opportunity to know if you’d even like or want what they have to offer.
  • Force the use of supplements or dieting to be used as part of their program.
  • Spend more time looking in the mirror or checking people out then looking after you.
  • Do personal training part time as a sole operator so lack relevant industry experience or benefit of a team for constructive feedback and updated skill set.
  • Advocate useless or dangerous exercises or fads.
  • Have a one size fits all exercise regime that doesn’t take your individual health and fitness needs into account.
  • Is all about their ego, insisting that their method of training is the only method that works.
  • Take little notice of your goals and personal health and fitness requirements and instead just want to smash you in a workout.
  • Don’t turn up on time (or at all) to appointments and are difficult to contact by phone or email.
  • Over promise and under deliver. Make you expect immediate results with out helping you understand the reality of life long fitness.

Personal trainers have lots of clients who have trained for a long time, can handle both technical training and mental or behavioural factors with ease and capability, work well within their team and are enjoyable one on one, have confidence without arrogance, are open to learning yet full of knowledge and easily expressive with out ever over stepping boundaries. Personal Trainers are focused on having everything working with harmony, helping to create a balance of physical and emotional awareness at each person’s level and have developed level of completeness in their own lives for others to role model on.

They are naturally magnetic; you look forward to your session, you find value in spending time with them, being around them lifts you higher and you feel you can confide in them all your hopes and fears.

Sunshine Coast Personal Trainers

Personal Trainers Sunshine Coast focus on your outcome and your happiness and are rewarded by your investment in them not dependant on it. They relish in having emotional transparency for that is where they learn the most about themselves and others.

Just like you can’t out exercise a bad diet or fill a full cup, it is very difficult to teach a technical trainer with umpteen qualifications to be honest and developed personality skills. Technical skills are great and very valuable but by having a trainer who lacks people skills you end up bored, frustrated and resentful of them. These kinds of trainers are the ones who repeat the same session with you that they did with the four people before you. Who talks more about themselves than your goals or your life. A trainer who rocks up late and leaves or moves onto another client before you even feel finished. They may never put you as a priority, well perhaps unless you threaten to cut off their income, at which time they may pick up their game only to revert back into lazy training and repeat the cycle. It’s no way to get where you want to go!

The best way to chose a trainer who will bring out the best in you is to look at a trainer as a whole person (yes, look beyond those biceps, abs or firm butt!!) and ask yourself the following fundamental questions:

  • Qualifications and experience
  • Willing to back product and Offer No Obligation Complementary session
  • Do they look the part, have they achieved something special do they walk their talk?
  • Variety of training resources
  • Would you like your body to look like theirs? Do they have health? Healthy skin, hair and body?
  • Are they engaged in your session with active spotting, motivating not just being a professional counter/time keeper?
  • Can they offer Nutritional advice that they have applied to their own lives?
  • Do they have the life you would like to aim towards on all levels?
  • Do you get along well with them? Are they genuinely interested in getting know you and helping you?
  • Do they have a personality you enjoy? Do they have a genuine circle of friends? Do they have a powerful circle of influence?
  • Are they a good listener? Do they listen closely to what you say, understand your goals and are you able to ask them questions?
  • Are they attentive and focused on you during your session? Are you their priority?
  • Do you feel motivated by them? Will they track your progress so you know you’re headed in the direction you want to go?
  • Are they positive and motivated in every aspect of their life?
  • Does what they say match up with what they do?

Ask yourself all of these questions because you will find later down the track on your own journey to health that it’s not just about losing weight or eating better or having more muscle but evolving into the best version of yourself. This flows across to your relationships, wealth, social circle and what you think you deserve. In life you are only as strong as your weakest link, only as fit as your last work out and only as happy as you chose to be in any given moment.

Gez McFadden. Play Fitness Kawana Sunshine Coast Queensland